Headed this week to the Grand Canyon in our old Winnebago RV (now minus mice, we think) Mary Alyce, the boys and I stopped outside Kingman, Arizona at this place, freshjerky.com, managed by Gus, whom you’ll find pictured below, handsome devil that he is. And that’s Mary Alyce taking pictures of the boys in the Freshjerky parking lot at left.

Just as the sign says, Freshjerky has a limited product selection — various kinds of meat jerky including buffalo; honey (minus “expanders,” whatever those are); olives; nuts, and cold drinks. Everything is very good for what it is and nothing is particularly cheap. Nobody goes to Freshjerky, for example, to buy cheap jerky. That’s why God invented truck stops.

But Freshjerky is a terrific example of American enterprise and how easy it can be to find a niche in our enormous and varied consumer economy. I found it hard to believe at first that people would really be drawn to such a place (Mary Alyce is the jerky fan in our family). And from one look at Gus, handing out tiny bites of cowboy jerky to lure customers, they aren’t drawn by his innate sex appeal.

So how is the company doing? Just fine, thanks, though most of the sales are online — about $2 million per year. The recession has had no significant impact yet on Freshjerky sales, according to Gus.

This is, in a way, a story similar to Parrot Secrets, which caused such a furor in this space a few months ago. Freshjerky is perfectly mundane. There is nothing Gus does that any of us couldn’t do as well — nothing. But he’s the guy selling $2 million per year online from a quarter acre beside the highway outside Kingman, Arizona, and we aren’t.

Heck, if Gus can do it why can’t we all?

Well we can. And in the current recession, as more jobs are lost and people become desperate for work, more of us should try channeling our internal Gus. We could make our own declarations of indendence by coming up with our own something good to sell.

113 Comments

Dried Meat
July 5, 2009 at 2:05 am

Are you kidding me? Gus is *hot*! Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Raphael Rutar
July 5, 2009 at 2:16 am

You missed to mention how the jerky was, because the importance of product quality for small businesses is more important than ever now that we have so many ways to tell people if we liked something or not.

Good point Bob, there is no point having an idea and waiting on it. You may as well be the one who gets rich off it first.

gingerbreadman
July 5, 2009 at 3:17 am

One thing you didn’t mention, Bob, is that Gus probably works more than 32 hours a week. Sometimes at night and one weekends. That is a foreign concept to a lot of folks nowadays. Folks who would rather sit and bemoan their situation and expect others (the Government) to take care of them. Unfortunately, the entitlement mentality is only going to get worse under our current Administration. I don’t intend to turn this into a political discussion (Momma told me to never talk about religion or politics in an open forum) but our society has lost the ability to come up with innovation and worse yet, have the drive to see it reach the light of day.

Dan
July 5, 2009 at 6:01 am

I agree to a large extent with you here GBM…. but when you say “our society has lost the ability to come up with innovation” I think it’s only partially true….

I’m in the tech sector, and I can tell you (again, not to start a holy war, but…), the American companies that look to India & China for slave labor & inferior quality are a huge contributor to the “race to the bottom”.

Indian software & call centers suck. We all know that. Chinese-manufactured goods falls apart in one’s hands or are made with lead-based paints, etc… But Americans are less & less willing (and able I suppose nowadays) to pay for quality. Which crushes the spirit of some of the best minds I know here in the US. Why go to the trouble of innovating (again, I’m talking tech here, I don’t know as much about parrots or jerky) if someone overseas will simply copy your idea & undercut you on price?

Most American tech workers cannot compete with Indians on price due to COST OF LIVING — it’s not a technical barrier – most Indians are still bumbling idiots when it comes to development – but when they’re 1/10th the price due to the cost of living, an American can’t suddenly slash his cost of living by 90%.

Oh well, sorry for the rant, and the detour… I applaud people like Gus, but the American middle class is being sold out by big business to a large extent. It’s happening.

phred14
July 6, 2009 at 4:29 am

> But Americans are less & less willing (and able I suppose nowadays) to pay for quality.

I don’t represent that statement. But there’s another consideration… Every now and then I’ve tried paying more, hoping to get better quality, and I haven’t. From what I can tell, these days you can buy cheap junk, or you can buy expensive junk – but it’s all junk. Since the expensive junk isn’t significantly better than the cheap junk, you just buy the cheap junk and replace it when it goes bad.

I wish I could find a way to get something decent around here. I fear I’ve become jaded, and don’t believe good old well-built stuff exists, any more. I’d love to be proven wrong – at an affordable price – I’m willing to pay more for better, but there are limits, especially with 2 in college.

This make me think back to 1970’s post-apocolyptic science fiction. They used to have stories set a decades or centuries after the big blow-up. People were eking out a living, repairing and nursing along pre-blow-up technology to keep themselves going. Clearly it wasn’t today’s technology lasting that long – no matter what the care or repair.

Gene
July 7, 2009 at 4:08 pm

Another word: “Weber”. Their BBQ’s cost a bit more than cheap ones, but whenever you have a problem, or need a part, just call. Not to a call center in India, but to someone who speaks American English and knows what they are talking about. I have had problems with their products, but the service truely makes up for any shortcomings.

Andrew Smith
July 10, 2009 at 9:16 am

Furniture is another example of this. There is a huge difference between the particle board crap that is cheap and some of the quality stuff out there. The crap will fall apart next time you move while the quality stuff can be handed down to your grandchildren. It does cost a lot more though.

Sorry for your loss of faith gingerbreadman, but you have fallen prey to the disease of our age that is even more virulent than the “entitlement mentality” and that is the “everything is in the crapper and its the government that’s the problem mentality.” It starts when you spend more time watching TV (mostly FOX News) than actually being engaged in your community – and not just a few like minded friends!

The percentage of people who feel entitled is no bigger than it was post-WW2 or in the 1980’s or post-Reagan – you just notice it more. I work with college students and church groups and non-profits and everywhere I see innovative ideas and people who want to take responsibility for their own lives and their communities. The fact that you don’t see it has to do with your narrow vision and not the true condition of our society.

The problem is that the excesses of capitalism have hurt as many people as the excesses of government and rather than taking an honest, adult and dispassionate assessment of the situation, people tend to blame others for the problems they experience.

You write as if you represent or at least remember a time and place when people worked hard and got ahead and did well without help. Well first, a good deal of that “wealth” was built upon the backs of people and ecological systems you never even noticed and second, there are plenty of people, unlike you, are actually taking responsibility rather than whining about the perceived deficiencies of the present.

There is a huge change in how people view where they get their food, furniture, cars, housing, etc. and it is and WILL be about quality over quantity as it used to be. The engineers and industrial designers coming out of school now have the vision of Jonathan Ives (Apple) where designing a computer that people will want and use for 10 years rather than a piece of plastic to be thrown away in 3 years. People are beginning to take pride again in local gardens, hand-made crafts and furniture and it is obvious that finally Detroit has seen the results of making cars without quality or innovation. So stop whining gingerbreadman!

You have no clue what the current administration will be doing except what the media tells you so until you spend 4 hours a day watching a variety of news stations, until you become intellectually honest, you will probably forever see the world through crotchity old guy glasses and miss the real innovation that are happening in front of your face.

Another thing that we should focus on as well is following our passions. Money isn’t everything, but if it makes Gus happy that’s great. The barrier to creating our own business is lower (it’d be lower with national healthcare).

The days of the 9 – 5 are coming to an end.

Alex

Njai
July 8, 2009 at 6:45 am

Alex, I wish you were right on the health care comment, but you aren’t. Because Gus makes about $2M per year, his health care cost is likely to go way up. The current proposal in Congress is to put a 4.6% “surcharge” (I love how Congress uses that word instead of the word “TAX”) on people whose incomes are $250K or more. If Gus files personal income tax instead of a business tax (as many small biz owners do) then 4.6% of $2M is $92,000 per year. Guaranteed, that’s more than he’s paying in health care costs right now, unless he’s self-insuring and has serious health problems (which is foolish, but people still do it).

To account for health care, most small biz owners I know join some kind of cooperate plan that enables them to get the cost benefits of a large pool of employees. It enables them to offer competitive plans and rates to their employees, without a heavy management burden.

When I considered starting my own small business, I found that obtaining and providing health care wasn’t the onerous hurdle I thought it would be. Frankly, its red tape and start up costs. Every governmental and pseudo-governmental agency and group wants it piece of you in the form of some kind of “approval” to be obtained before you can start your business, and will charge you a fee for the privilege. A few hundred here, another thousand there, and pretty soon, you’re talking real money. Its part of the reason why a substantial amount of capital is required to start most businesses.

Gus’s $92,000 per year to pay for “universal health care”, by the way, represents at least one employee he WON’T be hiring. Add that to the 50% increase in his energy costs associated with cap-and-trade, (meat isn’t made into jerky in the sun anymore, after all) and “freshjerky.com” just limited its growth (and employment) potential.

John
July 11, 2009 at 6:59 am

Njai – You either did not read the article closely or you don’t understand how businesses work. The $2 million figure was for gross sales. The taxable income of the business would be determined by the amount left after deducting sales expenses such as cost of goods, rent, utilities, employee salaries, etc. The gross profit would probably only be a very small percent of $2 million.

John
July 11, 2009 at 7:01 am

I forgot to mention that it would be the gross profit of the business that would be the amount that would be taxable.

John
July 11, 2009 at 7:01 am

Make that “net profit”.

Njai
July 16, 2009 at 11:45 am

John,

I understand plenty about businesses, both large and small. When someone says he “makes” $2M per year, it can mean many things, including both gross sales and net profit. And, what kind of “net profit” did YOU mean, Sir? EBIT? EBITDA? Or something else? Or do you not understand business?

But, the point stands: increasing taxes on a small business (now 5.4% according to the Senate’s version of the bill) is no way to grow employment.

MacGregor
July 11, 2009 at 10:35 am

Njai

Well first of all a 4.9% tax increase merely returns the tax to 1990 levels so this is not a new tax, it is a return to an old tax.

Second, the number ONE reason for bankruptcy is health care and as much as your own experience may show that health care cost for small business are not a major hurdle compared to other fees – a rather ridiculous claim when compared to my experience since health care is a continuous cost and most fees are a one-time event.

Sure companies try to work in cooperative groups to get better rates, but why should they have to tie themselves to the whims of other companies? And when they finally pick their insurance company or HMO, they are tied to the HMO bureaucracy as much as any govt. bureaucracy.

Njai
July 16, 2009 at 11:49 am

As I recall, we went into a recession (or very nearly so) in 1991-92 following Bush 41’s renege on his “read my lips” pledge. Ask him whether those higher taxes helped the economy. It seems like really basic logic that one does not RAISE taxes in the midst of a recession….

Mkkby
July 5, 2009 at 8:06 am

Bob is absolutely right. You can start a prototype business in your living room, in your spare time. Work out the kinks without spending a lot of money. If it provides you a living, then you can invest some money and hire some help. If not, all you’ve lost is a little time.

Gus probably started by making his product in his own kitchen. I’m sure it was hard work for long hours. I hope it pays him well now.

Cut out the cry baby comments about the government, outsourcing and foreign competition. Look at yourself. Are you sitting around watching your standard of living deteriorate without doing anything but complaining?

Technopundit
July 6, 2009 at 12:02 am

That jerkey has to be made using USDA inspected and approved Packaging and facilities. He doesn’t make jerky himself. Kinda cuts into the bottom line. Gus is no millionaire. He probably wholesales, and I doubt he pays taxes.
Welcome to the new economy.

Killer comment. I take advantage of outsourcing and get some damn fine quality work done by people for WAY cheap. Sometimes I even feel guilty, but instead of whining about it like most people do….oh and also realizing it’s here to stay, I took advantage of it. It’s too easy to make a living outsourcing technical stuff like graphic design, SEO, website design. It’s a beautiful thing…truly.

Roger
July 5, 2009 at 9:57 am

It would have been nice to have larger versions of the pictures. Some of us have larger screens so these show up barely larger than a postage stamp! I am sure the appearance of the shop also helps (it doesn’t look “slick” but rather real).

And if you think jerky is great, try biltong (Google it) which originates from South Africa. It is way better!

Ben
July 5, 2009 at 11:18 am

“Heck, if Gus can do it why can’t we all?”

You could ask the same question about lottery winners. There’s probably a big part of being at the right place at the right time and doing the right thing. Most people will work hard all their life and will not have a 2M business. You’re looking at the exceptions.

Keith
July 5, 2009 at 11:29 am

It sure helps when Google puts you at the top of the list for searches on “fresh jerky”.

ashish
July 5, 2009 at 11:42 am

I might be missing something, but Compete says he only had 178 visitors last month. How does that amount to $2 million in annual sales?

Wondered the same, but by examining the picture, there’s something that looks like a forklift behind him. So I would guess that he mostly sells to stores who then sell it to their customers. Otherwise if he mostly sell to customers I doubt that he would have time to be taken in picture. $2M sales per year means about 137 sales of $40 per day (what I would guess to be a high average). Wich means about 11 packages to make per hour in a 12 hour day. That’s just making the packages. That’s a lot of work for one person.

ashish
July 5, 2009 at 12:44 pm

Well, since “most of the sales are online”, these must be online stores.

Maybe he’s selling it on Amazon or eBay under some other brand, but I could not find any.

Quit whining!! You guys are idiots! Are you taking into consideration his walk in sales and his delivery sales? Did Bob say that ONLINE was his only outlet for sales? You guys sit around waiting to whine and cry about everything. Damn trolls is what you are…..pathetic!

Website says he has three stores, not just the one. For reference sake, a Subway sandwich franchise averages $900k in revenues/yr, so his three stores aren’t even doing that well. I somehow doubt that Gus makes most of his money from online sales. I suspect Bob got it backwards. Maybe I’ll email Gus and ask…

Todd
July 5, 2009 at 4:35 pm

More than likely to get $2M in sales a year he is supplying a distributor or another brand manufacturer.

Also Gus is likely very passionate about his jerky business. Unlikely he sat around like MBAs do these days and thought up selling jerky as a get rich quick scheme.

Glenn G
July 5, 2009 at 4:38 pm

Another point, often overlooked in small business, is that
$2 million in sales does not equate to $2 million in profits.
Not having Gus’s expense journal, one cannot say he is even
breaking even at this point…but he appears to be enjoying
himself. So, if he’s able to meet expenses and maybe set
some income back for “golden years”, his idea may be working…
for him! Others may not be able to make the grade.
When a big corporation, like Frito Lay, takes notice of his product
and offers to buy him out, then he’ll have a good idea what
his business is really worth…think Ben & Jerry ice cream!
Wiz

JohnB
July 6, 2009 at 9:06 am

$2 million in sales $2 million in profits

Especially making jerky where the cost of the meat is, most definitely, not a trivial expense.

Actually, the longer that I stare at that picture of Gus, the more he looks to me like Rob Enderle…

Esteban Trabajos
July 6, 2009 at 10:55 am

Bob,

Sounds like a good enough idea but I am wondering about something. I checked out the website and it says “allow two weeks for delivery.” So my question is…how fresh can that fresh jerky be when you finally get it?

Your pal Esteban

chube
July 8, 2009 at 9:15 am

The two weeks doesn’t have to be transit time. 13 days to prepare fresh jerkey, plus overnight shipping? Or, they’re so busy that they won’t get to fill the order for two weeks. Plenty of ways.

david heyer
July 6, 2009 at 11:23 am

Great web site! Love the look of it! Just purchased some jerky last night!

Blad_Rnr
July 6, 2009 at 11:59 am

Isn’t this so typical these days? A blogger makes a comment/statement about something so trivial and yet everybody has to over-analyze it to death. Don’t you guys have anything better to do? It’s a business in the middle of nowhere. Geesh.

Craigar
July 7, 2009 at 8:07 am

I live in Kingman, and have never stopped in. I’ll have to try it now.

Johnny Socko
July 7, 2009 at 10:34 am

Damn, I just passed through Kingman on July 4th. Missed a bona-fide Cringely sighting by *that* much!

Mark
July 7, 2009 at 1:08 pm

Thanks for trying to show people the way, Bob! Unfortunately, I think it’s a lost cause. Some people are hell-bent on believing that there are no opportunities out there. Most people who read your column are in the IT field. Most people in the IT field went into it thinking they were the next Bill Gates. They’re not, and they need a way to explain that. They can choose to believe that there are no opportunities in life, or they can choose to believe that they failed to take advantage of the ones they have. Once someone has chosen to believe that their problems are someone else’s fault, it’s almost impossible to convince them otherwise.

To all of you arguing for the reasons why not, nitpicking and so forth, I recall a quote that has proven valuable for me in my own very non-glamorous, profitable, and not-recession-affected (yet) service business.

From a literary luminary of the 70’s, Richard Bach: “Argue for your limitations and sure enough they’re yours.”

Chris Morrison
July 13, 2009 at 2:15 pm

The Fresh Jerky web site appears to be offline. I placed an order a week ago and haven’t received a confirmation or anything. And I was really looking forward to the Buffalo jerky…

jeffery capps
July 13, 2009 at 4:42 pm

I ordered some a week ago and got mine today. Best jerky I have ever had in my entire life! No more Jack’s Links for me! I always used to get that on the road, but no more. I’m loading up on this Fresh Jerky stuff.. and the stuffed olives were good that I got too. But, nothing can compare to the jerky. NOTHING.

Innocent Bystander
July 24, 2009 at 2:49 pm

Maybe it’s me, but why is everyone nitpicking this thing to death… the guy makes a living using his resources & the Internet. Who cares about splitting hairs? Congrats to him. Boo to you haters.

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